Friday, July 13, 2018

Our Credit Card Passport Debacle (Tuesday, July 10th, 2018)

We took our car to Fox Auto Park this morning, dropped it off and took their shuttle to the airport. We approached the Southwest ticket counter for international flights and handed the attendant our Credit Card passports. She took them and said “Can I have your passport booklet?” We explained that we didn’t have them, since our credit card passports would work for Mexico. She then explained to us that the credit card passports are only good for land and sea entrance to Mexico, they wouldn’t work for air travel (and then showed us where it said so on the back). 

She was very kind and told us where the federal building was if we wanted to get our passports re-issued, or offered to re-book our trip for the next day if we wanted to go get our passports. We chose to go get our passports and then try this all again. But unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. We would have to drive 5 hours back to Havasu to pick up our passport booklets, and then drive 5 hours back to LA, stay another night and then catch the same flight a day later.

When we left the Southwest counter, we called Fox Auto Park and told them that we wouldn’t be parking with them after all. They had a shuttle come pick us up and take us back to the parking lot and had our car waiting for us. They waived our fees for that entire reservation and told us how to reschedule our new parking reservation for the next day. Which we did on our tip back to Havasu.

We also needed to book another hotel room for tonight when we would get back to LA, so we did that on the road a well.

We emailed our hotel in Puerta Vallarta and let them know that we had a problem with our passports which was going to delay our arrival by a day. Within the hour, they had written us back, telling us how sorry they were about our passport issue and assured us that our hotel room would be waiting for us when we arrived tomorrow.

All I can say is that we are feeling blessed today. We made a silly mistake, and every single company we worked with on this trip treated us so well! With a few hours of unexpected driving and the cost of some gas and one extra hotel night, we are back in action and ready for our trip tomorrow.

As we were getting close to Havasu, our friend Tim called, and as we were talking to him, we all decided to meet in Riverside for dinner since he was out in that neck of the woods.  So instead of driving back to LA the way we came home, we headed out Rice Road toward Indio.

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